Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk worries about a "Terminator" scenario arising from research into artificial intelligence.

Musk was an early investor in AI firm DeepMind, which was later acquired by Google, and in March made an investment San Francisco-based Vicarious, another company working to improve machine intelligence.

Speaking to US news channel CNBC, Musk explained that his investments were, "not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return… I like to just keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence. I think there is potentially a dangerous outcome there."

"There have been movies about this, you know, like Terminator," Musk continued. "There are some scary outcomes. And we should try to make sure the outcomes are good, not bad."

Musk made his fortune as the co-founder of X.com, one of the companies which would eventually become PayPal, and in June 2002 co-founded SpaceX, which would go on to become the first private company to put a satellite into earth orbit. He is now best-known as the co-founder of Tesla Motors, the electronic car manufacturer.

In March 2014, he invested in Vicarious, alongside Mark Zuckerberg and actor Ashton Kutcher. The company's aim is to build a neural network capable of replicating the part of the brain that controls vision, body movement and language. It's ultimate aim is to build a "computer that thinks like a person,” according to the company's co-founder Scott Phoenix says, “except it doesn’t have to eat or sleep".